The Equifax Breach One Year Later: How Have Americans’ Perceptions Changed?
It’s been almost one year now since one of the—if not outright the—biggest security breaches the United States had ever seen took place: the breaching of Equifax, a consumer credit rating authority that stored millions of Americans’ personal data. Americans lost not just data, but also credit card credentials. LendEdu staged a study—and tipped us off about the results—that showed us what the US thinks about Equifax in the intervening time.
Perhaps the most amazing part of the study found that, out of those who were aware of the breach, 37.04 percent had yet to check and see if they were actually affected. To be fair, if they’d seen a credit card statement in that time and noticed nothing out of the ordinary, chances are they weren’t. But still, that’s a hefty percentage of folks who never even looked.
There were plenty of people aware of the condition, though, and they were out to get even. Fully 30.41 percent indicated they were actively working to join a class-action lawsuit against Equifax, and over half—53.38 percent—were interested in getting in on such an affair themselves. What’s more, 80.8 percent of those studied were concerned on at least some level about potential data breaches elsewhere in the system, proving that they’re at least paying attention to the concept.
Granted, this study was only given to 1,000 adult Americans—out of a possible 327 million—which might make it a little shaky in the statistical validity department. Still, leaving aside the sample size for a minute, there’s enough food for thought in this study to chew on. How many of us were actually unaware of—or had forgotten—the Equifax breach? How many of us are hesitant to even check our credit ratings because we’ve had the importance of not giving out our Social Security numbers online drilled into us from our earliest youth?
While there are several possible explanations for these numbers, a good point to take away from the whole thing is that we all need to be more vigilant, in general, with our information. From our debit cards to our mobile payments systems to our credit reports, knowing what’s going on with our money is just a smart idea in general.